the heavy fabric of her shirt, her skin was warm and supple, the muscles beneath like flexible steel. She was strong. “Let me go.” This time it was a command.
Dillon’s hand dropped away. There was no further point in holding on, anyway. The moment he’d stolen through the sheer audacity of daring to touch her had passed.
Like a person stirring from a waking dream, Cat blinked and shook her head. He wondered what she’d do next, if she would get mad because he’d grabbed her arm.
He didn’t think she would. Not if he handled it right. Not if he gave her an out she could live with—like pretending that nothing at all had occurred. Which it hadn’t. Not really. Not yet.
“Listen, thanks for warming things up.”
She studied him narrowly for a moment, then shrugged. “No problem.”
Her eyes were cool and level. He thought of the winter world beyond the window. To the untrained eye, it might seem a frozen expanse of white. But warm-blooded things moved there, if you knew where to look.
“Is there anything else I can take care of, before I go?”
A provocative remark occurred to him; he chose not to utter it. “No. Everything looks fine.”
“Well, then...”
“Thanks again.”
She gave a brief, tight nod. Then she turned and left him alone.
Dillon stood before the wall of windows for a long while after Cat was gone. He was feeling good. The best he’d felt in a long, long time.
After the wreck and the disappointments, after the long months of pain and sweat and fear as he forced his legs, through endless hours of physical therapy, to learn to carry him again, it was good to stand by a window in a house he loved and look out over the mountains in winter. It was good to be here. To be home.
And it was also good that Cat Beaudine was so damned competent. Because he’d already decided he was going to need a lot of help from the caretaker to get himself settled in.
Three
“Well? Have you seen him?”
Startled, Cat whirled around. Adora stood in the middle of Cat’s living room, smiling.
“Feel free to just walk right in,” Cat muttered.
Adora looked minimally regretful. “The kitchen door was open.”
“Right.”
“So. Did you see him?”
“Who?”
“Oh, stop it, Cat. You know very well who.”
“Dillon McKenna.” Cat said the name with resignation.
“Yes. Dillon.” Adora gave a voluptuous little sigh. “Everybody’s talking. He stopped in at the grocery store on his way through town. Lizzie Spooner bagged his groceries. And I know darn well that agency you work for must have called you to tell you to open up the house. That’s where you’ve been, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I was there for a while,” Cat conceded, then hastened to add, “And I also had the house out on Turner Road to see to. And the place on Jackson Pike.”
Adora looked reproachful. “I called you three times. Why didn’t you call back?”
Cat cast a rueful glance at the answering machine, which sat on her desk beneath the stairs. The message light was blinking. “I just got in myself.” She bent to finish the task of adding more logs to the banked fire, which had burned down to coals in her absence. When the logs were in, she shut the door on the side of the stove. “Want coffee?”
“Tea would be nice.”
“Tea it is.” Cat headed for the kitchen, where she got down two mugs and the can in which she kept the tea bags. Adora wandered into the room behind her. “How do you do it? It totally mystifies me.”
“How do I do what?” Cat went to the kitchen stove, which was half electric and half wood burning. On the wood-burning side, a huge kettle simmered. Cat stoked the fire there as she had the one in the front room.
“You know what,” Adora said. “How do you live out here in the middle of nowhere without a soul to talk to half the time?”
“I like my privacy.” Cat gestured toward the living room, where several tall bookshelves lined every available wall space. “And I read a lot.”
“How in-tel-lect-u-al.“ Adora teasingly drew out each syllable, then tipped her head and wondered out loud, “Don’t you ever miss all of us together, the way it used to be?”
Cat thought of the house where she’d grown up. It hadn’t been a very big house in which to raise four daughters. There had only been one bathroom, which had always been occupied with one female or another putting on makeup or fixing her hair.
“Well, do you miss it?” Adora prompted when Cat didn’t answer right away.
“Not as much as I like my privacy.” Cat poured water from the kettle over the tea bags.
“I miss it.” Adora’s eyes were as melancholy as her tone. “I’m a family sort of person.”
“I know.” Cat smiled in understanding. It had been hard on Adora when their mother remarried. Charlotte Beaudine Shanahan had always been a man’s woman. And from the day she’d met her second husband, her grown daughters had faded to the background of her life. That was just fine with Cat. And Phoebe and Deirdre both had families of their own now. But Adora felt deserted.
“Come on,” Cat said gently. “Take off your coat.” She indicated the table. “Sit down. Drink your tea.”
Adora sat, then slipped out of her coat and draped it behind her on the back of her chair. That accomplished, she grinned at Cat, who’d taken the seat at the end of the table. “Okay. Tell me all about it.” She actually rubbed her hands together in delighted anticipation. “You saw him, didn’t you?”
Cat restrained a sigh. She didn’t even want to think about her unsettling encounter with Dillon McKenna. And she certainly didn’t want to talk about it.
“Cat. Did you see him?”
Cat wrapped her tea bag around her spoon and squeezed the last few drops from it.
“Oh, come on.” Adora let out a little puff of air in disgust. “What is the matter with you? Are you trying to torture me?”
“No, I’m not trying to torture you.” Cat set the tea bag on the edge of her saucer and lifted the cup to her lips. “And yes, I saw him.” She took a careful sip.
“Oh, I knew it.” Adora actually bounced in her chair. “I was right, wasn’t I? He needs some time to...reexamine his life. To decide where to go from here.”
“He
